Purgatory

18

Regrets, phew-oh, they are a recurrent killer. I’ve been tormented, tortured, and roasted to rosary degree by my own history. I was heading down to Feeney’s in Quay Street, still that rarity, an unchanged pub with real Irish barmen. Not a Polish guy attempting, Jesus wept. I admire the hell out of the Polish, but shoot me, a pint of Guinness, I want it crafted. A woman in her thirties sashaying along on those crazed Louboutins but, worse, in skinny jeans.

Christ.

Then as if out of the ether, the memory, grounding me to the spot, outside the Four Corners. I had a reasonably good friend, we’d once played hurling together, we shared more than a few pints and that easy camaraderie of long friendship.

Yet I’d recently heard he’d been found dead in his flat, alone and unwanted. He’d been dead eight months. His flat was bang in the center of the city. This to happen in New York, you’d think.

“Yeah, how the shit goes down in large cities.”

But Galway.

I realized,

“This is who I am, the guy who didn’t check on his mate.”

Not all the fucking poetry in the world was going to write that line.

A limo pulled up.

Swear to God, a goddamn limo. The window rolls down and Reardon, looking like a bewildered hippie, says,

“Get in.”

I didn’t.

He waited, then snapped,

“You deaf?”

I said,

“Actually yes, that’s why I have a fucking hearing aid, you pompous bollix.”

He laughed, said,

“Ah, Taylor, no wonder you amuse me.”

Said,

“I’ll give you a hundred bucks to get in.”

Fuck on a bike or a limo. I said,

“I can’t be bought.”

“Two hundred?”

I got in.

He said,

“Can’t be bought, huh?”

I sighed,

“Not easily.”

He was wearing beat-up 501s, a white worn T that proclaimed,

Grateful Dead, SA, 1977.

I thought,

“Yeah, as if. The fucker wasn’t even born.”

A large oxygen cylinder was on the seat beside him. He said,

“A guy who thinks two hundred bucks is not being bought easy, now there’s a schmuck.”

He nodded at the canister, said,

“Best hangover cure in the biz.”

“Where’s the money?”

He seemed genuinely puzzled.

“Money?”

“The two hundred.”

“You want it NOW?”

Yeah, I did.

He tapped the glass partition, got the cash from the driver, handed it to me. I didn’t say thanks, asked,

“What do you want?”

He intoned,

“I am not a man, I am a people.”

Fuck.

He explained,

“That was said by Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, a Colombian politician, back in 1948, when my old man knew him.”

He gave a lopsided grin, a sight I’d believed belonged purely to caper novels, added,

“My old man claimed to have been in the crowd when Roa put a barrage into every part of Jorge’s body.”

Surprising me, he reached into a pouch, produced a perfect spliff, lit it, drew deep, then,

“The crowd beat Roa to death, tore him to pieces, said my old man.”

Offered me a toke. I declined, asked,

“Fascinating as this history ramble is, it’s of the slightest fucking interest to me, why?”

He loved it, slapped my knee.

Our neighborhood, you did that, you lost the hand. He said,

“Ah, dude, you’re just so freaking wild, rude as a rattler. I’m giving you a picture of my dear old dad so you can see where. . I’m coming from.”

It was probably then I reckoned Reardon was truly mad, so out there he could pass for sane, and he had the wealth for sanity to be moot. He flicked the roach out the window, said,

“Let them smoke weed.”

Then he began to play with a heavy gold Claddagh ring on his right hand, finally took it off, said,

“My daddy left me this and a shitload of major stock, especially in Bogotá. When we buried him, back in Oakland, you know what I said at his grave?”

“Thanks, Dad?”

He gave me the look, to see how much I was shitting him.

A lot.

Said,

“Now, Daddy-o, you can think inside the box.”

Save for the serious money part, most of this was horseshit. I asked again,

“What did you want to see me for?”

The limo had stopped near Blackrock, the end of the Salthill Promenade. A storm was building across from the Aran Islands, waves beginning their brute intensity to lash the front. He said,

“I wanted to warn you off Kelly. She’s my trusted employee and all that good crap but she’s nuttier than a pack of festering Church of Latter-day Saints. Apologies to Romney, etc.”

For some reason I wanted to goad him, did, asked,

“Buying Galway, how’s that going for you?”

He smiled. With the dope, it teetered on the brink of warmth, said,

“To date, three new factories, pledges of a school, a truck full of cold cash to the Council, and, hey, I’m nearly there.”

I asked the obvious.

“Why?”

He opened the door, let the beginning wind swirl across our legs, said,

“Jesus, Jack, apart from the answer, because I can, I thought you’d have figured out what I’m going to do.”

I’d no idea, said so, and he sighed, said,

“Jesus H, you are a dumb fuck. I’m buying it so I can squander it.”

Squander a town?

He laughed full, said,

“Don’t you just fucking love it?”